Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 vs iPad Mini 4 vs Samsung Galaxy Tab S:Hot cake is................................

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2                                                                                                                           High-end Android tablets are becoming few and far between, indicating to us that the tablet segment in general has been seeing a slowdown. Most consumers seem to be more gravitated to either picking up a low-cost laptop hybrid, or the many inexpensive tablets that pack reasonable value for the money. On that note, it’s no surprise to us that many companies have stopped production and development for high-end tablets on the Android side. And then there’s Samsung!                                                                           The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 has bright and vividly colorful screen. Its rail-thin design is comfortable and ultracompact. It comes with 32GB of storage, a microSD card expansion slot and fingerprint scanner. Battery life is long.

Unlike previous models, there's no IR blaster.                                                                                            Design

The Galaxy Tab S2 feels nicer to hold in two hands than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and its sibling, the Galaxy Tab 8.4. In fact, it's now light enough to comfortably clutch in one hand.

The Samsung Tab S2 is lighter in part because it's backed by a soft-touch plastic cover instead of an aluminium shell. Metal edges outline the tablet instead of a plastic frame this time.

The entire device may not be metal, but it does feel smooth. It's better than the dimpled plastic of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S, yet remains just as grippy.

Two small, springy buttons are embedded into the back of the Tab S2, but they're meant for clipping a cover onto the tablet and aren't releases to pop off the back. It's all sealed shut.

There is, however, a microSD card slot on the frame to optionally boost the 32GB and 64GB configurations with an additional 128GB of expandable storage.

Alongside this same rail are a solid-feeling power button and volume rocker. Stereo speakers, a headphone jack and an off-center micro USB port line the bottom of the tablet.

The Tab S2 has a physical, fingerprint-sensing home button in front with the usual oval shape, and two capacitive buttons on either side. These keys light up by default every time the display is touched.

The beams of light are a bit distracting when scrolling and reading text near the bottom of the screen, and turning them off in settings doesn't help orient your fingers in the dark. This wider tablet isn't like a narrower phone, where you know the exact location of these keys.

The latest Galaxy Tab comes in three colors: Black, White and Gold. Gone are the fancy names like Dazzling White and Titanium Bronze, reflecting Samsung's minimalist design with this year's ultra-thin tablet.                 Display:

A tablet is all about the display and we've seen some unusual flip-flopping in resolutions over the past few years. With the 2012 Nexus 10 (which is made by Samsung) plopping out a 2560 x 1600 pixel display and the original Samsung Galaxy Tab S following suit, the Tab S2 now steps down to 2048 x 1536 pixels (264ppi density).                                                                                                                                          That's the same resolution as we saw on the 2014 Nexus 9 tablet and it's the same as the iPad Air 2, which is the exact same size at 9.7-inches too. The shift from higher resolutions might be partly due to the shift in aspect ratio from 16:9 (or 16:10) to 4:3, or it could simply be that the returns for that resolution weren't hugely apparent.                                                                                                                                        However, the Tab S2 is equipped with an AMOLED display whereas most competitors offer LCD. Samsung is known for AMOLED and has enjoyed great results on its Galaxy smartphones and Note tablets with this technology. On the Tab S2, you're again rewarded with great contrast, lots of punch in visuals, and deep, rich colours that are typical of such a panel.                                                                                           You might notice that the richness makes some content look a little dark so you have to bump up the brightness to get best out of movies and videos. We found the colours a little overwrought in the opening scenes when watching Mockingjay, for example, but the deep blacks and brilliant blues set up Gravity nicely. On the flipside, some games are incredibly rich, making us wish we could dial it down a little for a more natural view.                                                                                                                                          AMOLED can also struggle to produce clean and bright whites as a result, something that Samsung has worked hard to improve on recent devices - but there's a hint of cool blue white here.                                   The thing you will notice, however, is that on this size of display some of Android's apps don't scale as well as they should. You'll find softness becomes apparent in some games, for example, or some of the graphic elements in apps don't look as sharp as they do on your smartphone, phablet or smaller tablet. Take Real Racing 3 as an example: it looks blocky, so visually it's not as pleasant as on smaller or even 16:9 tablets with less display height. If that's a factor for you, the smaller 8-inch Tab S2 model might be the better choice. The display aspect also means the Tab S2 works a little better in portrait orientation than 16:9 devices, making for a better reading experience, whether that's on the included Flipboard-based Briefing newsreader, or when using something like the Kindle app. On the flip side, you'll have a lot of empty space top and bottom when watching movies in landscape - especially if they are shot in the cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio.

 Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 houses an octa-core Exynos 5433 chipset, comprised of a 1.9GHz and 1.3GHz quad-core CPU. It also has 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card expansion slot that's expandable up to 128GB. The Samsung website lists a 64GB version, but only the 32GB model is available for purchase; Samsung hasn't released details on when and if the 64GB one be available.

Other features include Bluetooth 4.1 with low-energy function (BLE) and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac MIMO -- which is faster than regular Wi-Fi.

SOFTWARE

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 runs the latest version of Android with the scaled-down version of TouchWiz. It's a similar software experience to what we see on the Note 5 and latest Galaxy S6 devices.

There are not too many apps loaded out of the box, but since this is an AT&T LTE model you get plenty of bloatware from this US carrier. AT&T apps include myAT&T, AT&T AllAccess, AT&T Locker, Device Help, AT&T FamilyMap, AT&T Ready2Go, YP, WildTangent Games, and AT&T Messages. Given the recent DIRECTV deal, you will also find a DIRECTV app installed on the Tab S2.

Samsung apps include Galaxy Apps, Hancom Office Viewer, Memo, Samsung Milk Music, SideSync, and Smart Manager. You will also find several Google apps, but these have been reduced by Google so loading up your preferred Google apps is up to your own preferences in many cases.

One of the reasons to pick up a Samsung tablet is to be able to use a couple apps at the same time in a side-by-side format. As you can see in a couple of screenshots in my gallery, many apps look absolutely terrible in this format and neither app ends up being useful.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2's brilliant screen, plentiful storage capacity and slender build make it a great tablet for everyday use at home or on the go.                                                                                             Price ;$347.99

VS                                                                                                                                                        iPad Mini 4                                                                                                                                               The iPad mini 4 is obviously the best smaller tablet Apple has ever created; well, I say obviously, but last year's mini 3 was actually something of a backwards step. That device was just the mini 2 with a new colour and TouchID, but the mini 4 is a much better device.Overdue upgrades add faster A8 processor, better cameras, a more vivid Retina display, slightly slimmed-down design, and the ability to run split-screen apps in iOS 9. The small size is perfect for traveling and iOS remains a superior user experience on tablets.             At 7.9in and with a "Retina" resolution of 1536 x 2048 giving a pixel density of 324 per inch, you'd be forgiven for thinking the mini 4's screen is exactly the same as the mini 3's. But it isn't. At a more technical level, the new tablet's screen is, according to the experts at DisplayMate, the best screen on any iPad, ever – and that includes the Air 2and new iPad Pro.                                                                                         Moving from the iPad Mini 2/3, the iPad Mini 4 also has slightly different speaker grills at the bottom (one row of holes at the bottom, rather than stacked rows), and the size is now very slightly different: at 203x134x6.1mm the iPad Mini 4 is slightly taller and thinner than the iPad Mini 3 (200x135x7.5mm).           Apple has a couple different tiers of camera sensors it uses—the top-end ones in iPhones, and the "good enough" ones in iPods and iPads. Like the sixth-generation iPod Touch, the iPad Mini 4 steps up from a good-enough 5MP camera to a good-enough 8MP camera, roughly the same one as used in the iPad Air 2. The two tablets take very similar pictures in outdoor, indoor, and low light. Neither is as good as an iPhone, but both can capture more detail than the 5MP iPad Mini 2 and 3.                                                                 The iPad mini 4 is pushed along by Apple’s 64-bit A8 processor, which is definitely an upgrade from last year but not quite as powerful as the Air 2 despite what Schiller boasted on stage. Apple says the new chip delivers speed gains of up to 30 percent, and sure, apps definitely open faster. The mini 4 has 2GB of RAM inside, so apps are also less likely to unexpectedly restart when you’re multitasking, and Safari won’t need to reload your tabs so often. Graphics performance has jumped by 60 percent, and it’s impossible to find any current iOS game that slows down this iPad in any noticeable way.                                                               Apple claims the iPad mini 4 can last up to 10 hours on a single battery charge when connected to Wi-Fi. Our battery test streams a full-screen video over Wi-Fi on 80 percent screen brightness, and the iPad mini 4 lasted for 5 hours and 15 minutes. Not quite as long as Apple claims, but in line with other small-screen tablets. The 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 lasted 5 hours, 33 minutes. The iPad mini 3 and the iPad Air 2 lasted for 5 hours, 45 minutes, and 5 hours, 15 minutes, respectively. The iPad mini 4 features 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO support, and performed admirably on our networking tests.

But, A lot more expensive than most 8-inch tablets on the market. Multitasking on the smaller screen isn't as useful as on the larger Air 2. Processing speed is a step below other iPads and new iPhones, and battery life takes a step down, too.

THE BOTTOM LINE The iPad Mini 4 makes the most of iOS 9 and has a number of welcome upgrades, but its high price will have some skipping straight up to larger iPad Air models.                                             Price:$399.00

VS                                                                                                                                                         Samsung Galaxy Tab S

Samsung has been pouring a lot of effort into making a really decent iPad rival, and that strategy has seen some hare-brained decisions (such as launching the Tab Pro in January 2014, and then replacing it a few months later with the Galaxy Tab S).

But, apart from annoying anyone that's already bought into the Tab Pro range, this strategy has finally yielded a brilliant tablet in the shape of this Super AMOLED-shod Tab S duo. Available in both 8.4- and 10.5-inch screen sizes, Samsung has taken the best of its OS and technology ability, fused them with the best display on a tablet and created something pretty special.                                                                               Performance

The Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is, generally speaking, very smooth and slick. The kinks and jerkiness we detected in the Tab Pro 8.4 are mostly absent, though the Tab S 8.4 doesn’t zip along quite as smoothly as the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S5.

The processor behind this is Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa (5420), which is in eight core chip with four ARM Cortex A15 CPUs clocked at 1.9GHz, and four lower-power ARM A7 cores at 1.3GHz. It’s right up there with the most powerful processors on any Android phone or tablet, scoring 904 in Geekbench’s single-core test, and 2,669 in the multi-core. Even accounting for Samsung’s reputation to boosting benchmarks with high performance modes, it’s clear this is a very powerful device — it’s only slightly slower than Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and OnePlus One.

It’s a slightly less impressive performer in the graphics department, though it’s still more than powerful enough to run even demanding games smoothly. It scored 13,518 in the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited test, whereas the latest phones are getting close to 20,000 these days. It’s only a few thousand points less than the iPad mini 2, though, and you’re unlikely to find any games that won’t work on it. As with most phones and tablets at present, the Tab S has more processing power than it really needs.

The battery life is great, the screen has to be seen to be believed (and is excellent for media and internet viewing, which is really the point of a tablet) and the price is on a par with the rest of the industry. Well done, Samsung.

$349.99